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Friday, December 21, 2018

You can go caroling with cards all year long - acrylic, pen and ink greetings by Carol

Listening to Christmas Carols and making cards. Yup. That's been me for about a week. I have made about 60 so far. Don't stop me now!

It started with the need to make a few Christmas cards.

I had a card (I now wish I had saved to show you but I made tags out of it instead.) with the red part like the one below, except it looked like nothing great but I thought if I did it again, I'd have a tree.

There are a couple of alphabet stencils that would work for this. I used Chunky Alphas by Joanne Shaper. I added washi tape (You can find it at Gwen Lafleur's store) for contrast. Next, I drew with a pen around the letters I wanted to highlight. Ps & Qs (as in mind them) worked for this one. Others I marked up "HI" and "OK".

I made a couple of notebooks on the same theme complete with flying pigs randomly (annoyingly?) stenciled in different places on a few of the pages. The piggies are rubber stamps designed by Sandee Setliff.

I left the insides of all my cards blank except for this one that seemed to warrant something more:

Here's the thing about card making: You get not only better as you go but ideas will steadily begin to percolate!

I have a book of business letter samples from maybe the 70s. Perfect for card making.

I liked this round in the small of from Pam's Woman of Mystery StencilClub set. I thought about outlining the words "love" and "hope" from the circle but then I thought I would need to do all of the loopy lettering and, well, I had to call a halt somewhere.

Ink the round edges in green.

And, if you do as I did and clean up part of your office the next day (looking for circle cutter I never found) in the midst of your card making, ephemera might appear that you have no idea whence it came.

I think these are my faves. At least at the moment. I want to make some in black and white.

My BIG tip: When you make a card you like, make a few more. You can always vary them a little so you don't get bored.

I hope I have inspired you to go make a few sets of cards. I challenge you to pull out your stencils and look at ones that would suit your card-making style.

My last tip: Save some for yourself because you might need to send an actual hand-written missive to a friend or five you love in the coming year!

If you want to delve into card making in a much more 3D manner, check out Debi Adams' online course at StencilGirlStudio!